Fr. Rick Spicer

We witness a scene so unlike Jesus in today’s gospel. Making a whip out of cords, he drove merchants and money changers out of the temple area. “Take these out of here, and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.”  Clearly, he was angry, visibly upset by what was going on. Zeal for God’s house consumed Jesus, prompting him to act as he did.

There are two kinds of anger. The more common form is rage that leads to some expression of violence. That is the anger we experience and express most often from road rage to domestic confrontations. Almost daily, we hear on the news of someone taking revenge by going on a shooting rampage.  When this anger is expressed, someone is hurt, perhaps fatally.

Then there is zealous anger.  Zeal is defined as enthusiastic devotion to a cause, thus zealous anger is an anger of passion. Those who demonstrate zealous anger aim their energy toward a common good. Zealous anger motivated Susan B. Anthony to stand up for the voting rights of women. Zealous anger prompted Martin Luther King to challenge the segregation laws of the Deep South. Zealous anger compelled Caesar Chavez to safe guard the migrant workers.

Zealous anger moved Jesus to do what he did in the temple that day. The sanctity of the temple was being violated by those who had lost sight of what the temple stood for. The temple was there to serve God, not the merchants and money changers.

The temple is long gone, but the lesson of this gospel remains relevant to us today. We are temples of the Holy Spirit.  Imagine Jesus zealously striving to clean our temples of the obstacles in our lives to divine grace, that which thwarts us from having a truly intimate relationship with God.

Centuries ago, God led the chosen people out of a life of slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land.  As the crow flies, any journey across the Sinai would not take 40 years even on foot, so one can’t give Moses high marks for his navigation skills, but at this point along the way, God provided the Israelites with the most important GPS tool they would ever need. God provided them with the Ten Commandments to free them from slavery, not the slavery they knew in Egypt, but the slavery of sin.

I once assumed that most Christians knew the Commandments but I learned otherwise when teaching a class on the Book of Exodus to some high school kids. None of them could name all Ten Commandments, much less in sequence.  Soon after that, there emerged across our country a campaign to get rid of any display of the Ten Commandments on public property. Atheists, agnostics and the ACLU contend that such displays violated the constitutional separation of church and state.  For five years, the city of Everett fought a suit brought on by an agnostic to remove such a monument that was donated in 1959.  The monument is still there, partially hidden by shrubs. Out of sight, out of mind?

The courts have ruled such monuments may remain if they were viewed as historical rather than religious symbols.  It shall be interesting to see if someone ever sues the Supreme Court, insisting that images of the Ten Commandments be removed from its chambers, images that serve to remind us that the very law of our land is based on our Judeo-Christian heritage. 

For centuries, the Ten Commandments have served as the foundation by which western society has based its law. They have no power. Rather, their value comes from how well they are followed and evidently, they are not always followed well. Many people think of them as being restrictive, calling us to a way of life that is out of tune with much of society, but in fact, God designed them to spare us from the consequences of sin. 

Honesty, respect for parents, fidelity, respect for property, putting God before all else, and taking time to worship God are traits that distinguish those who honor the Ten Commandments.

Out of sight, out of mind. That may be how many in our society treat the Ten Commandments, so by what values do they live their lives? Wherever they are ignored, we find little regard for life, respect for others or their property and commitments. When they are forgotten, we are more apt to respond with rage if things go wrong. The headlines remind us of that too often. Instead, of placing God first in our lives, we place ourselves first, thus greed and materialism prevail. I doubt that we would be struggling with the current economic crisis if we as a country had been honoring God by following the Ten Commandments.

If you remember one thing from these readings, remember that you are God’s temple.  Just as Jesus cleared the Temple of all its corrupting influences, he wants to cleanse us of the same.  Just as he was zealous for his Father’s house then, he zealously cares about every one of us today.  In turn, we are urged to zealously live our lives according to all Ten Commandments, thinking of them as our response to God’s covenant for living life free from sin, that is, being the holy people we are called to be.

Paul’s timeless observation is well worth noting whenever we are tempted to minimalize the Ten Commandments. God is so much wiser than we are.  Think of all the many laws that govern our lives, yet none can foster a greater sense of civility than the Ten Commandments. Any time we ignore them, we are apt to sin and too often, we find out painfully and much too late that sin devastates us and the lives of others.  Sin leads to unhappy consequences. If Lent is to be of any value to us, we should zealously strive to cleanse our hearts of the needless clutter that distances us from the wisdom and love of God.

Late one night, a cheerful truck driver pulled into a roadside diner for a coffee break. The atmosphere in the diner suddenly grew tense when three wild looking cyclists, wearing dirty black leather jackets trimmed in metal, walked in. Immediately, they targeted the truck driver. One poured salt on his head; another flipped his doughnut on the floor, while the third “accidentally” bumped the coffee onto the driver’s lap. The driver didn’t say a thing. He merely got up, walked slowly to the cashier, calmly paid his bill and left. “Man, that doodle ain’t much of a fighter,” sneered one of the cyclists.  The waiter behind the counter peered out the window and replied, “He doesn’t seem to be much of a driver either. He just ran his truck over three motorcycles!”

Getting even is the name of the game many of us play whenever we have been victimized by someone. Buried in scripture, we find lines, such as from Leviticus, “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” to justify such an attitude. On the surface, getting even may seem so freeing, but in fact, revenge paralyzes us. When we refuse to forgive, we remain paralyzed by a past event.

Perhaps that is why Mark provides us with such an unusual setting in today’s gospel.  Being a man of few words, he doesn’t tell us why the man was paralyzed but there had to be a link between the paralytic’s condition and his life-style. His actions likely caused his condition. Our actions and the choices we make do have unavoidable consequences and effects. That is one reason why many bystanders show little mercy to those struck down by diseases supposedly caused by their own behavior. In biblical times, many viewed illness as a punishment for sin.  Maybe that is why the crowd would not bother to make room for the paralytic to come through the front door. I could picture some saying, “It serves you right!” Their attitude brings to mind another saying, “You made your bed and now you must lie in it.”  But we hear Jesus saying instead, “Take up your bed and walk. Your sins are forgiven.”

I imagine the paralytic and his friends were as surprised as the scribes when Jesus said, “My child, your sins are forgiven.” This was not the cure they made such a scene to obtain, yet anyone who has labored under the experience of guilt, shame or disbelief can identify with being spiritually paralyzed and the freedom that comes from experiencing forgiveness.

The word forgiveness or one of its variations appears nearly 150 times in the Bible.  As you might expect, next to the theme of God’s love, forgiveness is the single most prominent theme in the New Testament. Mark wastes little time bringing that theme to our attention with the opening lines of his second chapter by linking healing with forgiveness.

The scribes protested Jesus’ actions, asserting that only God can forgive sins. In addition, the paralytic had not confessed to any wrong doing, so what gives?  Mark tells us, “Jesus immediately knew in his mind what they were thinking to themselves.” Most likely, he also knew what was going through the mind of the paralytic as well, namely a change of heart that was freeing him from his spiritual paralysis. He was ready to seek forgiveness. Thus in the end, Jesus could tell him, “Rise, pick up your mat and walk.”

None of us are physically paralyzed but how often have we found ourselves spiritually paralyzed? Gripped by an irrational anger that fuels a refusal to forgive or seek forgiveness, we find ourselves in a rut with our relationship, not only with the person who has victimized us or the one whom we have victimized but also with God. Is there a sibling or cousin, parent or child, in your life whom you have not spoken to perhaps in years because of some past hurt, injury, affront, or misunderstanding?  

The paralytic personifies us crippled not only by our sins but also by our reluctance to celebrate the art of forgiveness. Jesus uses this miracle to enable us to see that forgiveness can be healing.  While the scribes may be right in claiming that only God can forgive sins, if we are to fully experience divine forgiveness, then we must practice the art of forgiveness as well. Many times for a penance, I will tell people to slowly and reflectively say the Lord’s Prayer, then keep the promise they have just made. Some people will looked at me puzzled, but others quickly recall the line I have in mind, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” I encourage the penitent to then pray for everyone that comes to mind who is in need of their forgiveness and to pray for those whose forgiveness they need. Through prayer, they take that first step toward forgiving and being forgiven.

When we are willing to forgive or seek forgiveness, we can break down the walls of separation and we can bring about healing in our relationships, healing the broken hearted.

Recall the last line from Isaiah when God told the Israelites, “Your sins I remember no more.”  Fortunately for us, God has selective memory. Some of us find forgiving nearly impossible because we cannot forget the hurt, but bear in mind, forget and forgive do not mean the same thing. So what do we gain by forgiving others? Like the actions of God toward the Israelites, Jesus frees the paralytic and us from the past, opening a brand new start in life. Forgiveness makes possible a whole new relationship with God, not only directly, but also indirectly through the restored relations in our lives as well. Simply put, we need not remain paralyzed by wounded relationships. Forgiveness offers us a new start in life, so leave here, as convinced as the paralytic, that Jesus has come to offer you a new lease on life, a lease that allows no room for revenge of any kind.
 

“Unclean! Unclean!” Those words from the book of Leviticus might hit home for some of us, even if we don’t suffer from leprosy.  As a confessor, I have listened to a fair number of penitents over the years begging forgiveness for what they have done or failed to do. Against the backdrop of our conscience, certain sins stand out like blotches or scabs that leave us feeling unclean until we make our peace with God, which the Church urges us to do in the sacrament of reconciliation.

Fortunately, today’s lepers are no longer forced to live physically apart from their family and community, but some sinners find themselves feeling excluded from their faith community. The Church maintains that grave sins, such as murder, fornication, adultery, and apostasy prevent us from fully belonging to our faith community and receiving the grace of Holy Communion. In effect, you could say that grave sins leave us ritually unclean.

Any sin is an offense against reason, truth and right conscience. While any wrong is a sin, not every sin is grave enough to cut us off from God’s love. I think of sin as coming in every shade of gray from a dirty white to nearly black. The darker the gray, the more serious the wrongful act. Any sin that is life threatening to our eternal relationship with God is labeled by the Church as being a mortal sin and rightly so, for mortal sin destroys the loving relationship with God that we need for eternal happiness.

St. Augustine defined sin as being an utterance, a deed, or a desire contrary to the eternal law. A sin becomes mortal when we consciously and freely choose to do something gravely wrong against the divine law and contrary to our divine destiny. When we choose to commit a mortal sin, we are opting to reject God’s love and friendship right then and there.

Once the sin has been committed, many sinners are left feeling much like the leper did. Their conscience is troubled. They could grow accustomed to feeling “unclean,” and grow distant from God and the Church, and many do, sometimes oblivious to the harm their stance plays in their lives and the lives of others.

Many sinners rationalize that their act is not all that wrong or even wrong at all. They cling to values that are contrary to what God puts forth in scripture and the teachings of our Catholic faith. For example, many people are convinced that there is nothing wrong with living together or missing Mass on Sundays since others do so, but God’s morality is not based on popular opinion.  Even if they are widely accepted by society, immoral values can and do imperil our relationship with God, thus leaving us feeling “unclean.” Our attitude toward sin and its potential impact on us brings to mind a story a friend recently e-mailed me.

A young couple moved into a new neighborhood.  The next morning while they were eating breakfast, the young woman saw her neighbor hanging the wash outside. “That laundry is not very clean,” she said. “She doesn’t know how to wash correctly. Perhaps she needs better laundry soap.”

Her husband looked on, but remained silent. Every time her neighbor would hang her wash to dry, the young woman would make the same comments. About one month later, the woman was surprised to see nice clean wash on the line and said to her husband: “Look, she has learned how to wash correctly. I wonder who taught her this.”

The husband said, “I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows.”

Unlike in the passage from Leviticus, the key word in the gospel is “clean.” The leper came to Jesus and begged, “If you wish, you can make me clean.”  Out of compassion, Jesus then did the unthinkable. He touched the man and said, “I do will it. Be made clean.” Given the chance, Jesus would say that to every sinner.  He came into the world so that we could experience divine forgiveness and be cleansed of our wrong doing. He died on the cross to save us from our sins, leaving behind the sacrament of reconciliation as a means for us to hear his words of absolution, spoken by the priest who hears our confession. This is the only way we can be cleansed of our grave sins, thus restored to full communion in the church, but like the leper, we first have to come forth and ask to be made clean.

To experience the fullness of God’s mercy and love, Jesus left us with a blueprint for living, but so often we reject what he tells us to do because we fail to see either the value of what is gained by following his way or the consequences for ignoring God’s moral law. A good confessor often finds himself cleaning the sinner’s limited outlook on the world and God’s mercy.

However long we have been away from this sacrament or however grave our sins are, when we contritely confess our sins, we can be quickly cleansed through the words of absolution and once we are, God’s hope is that we will seek to remain clean. That is what we resolve to do each time we pray the act of contrition. God willing, we then develop an aversion to that which leaves us feeling unclean. Even venial sins can do that.  The catechism cautions that deliberate and unrepented venial sin disposes us little by little to commit mortal sin.

Consider the little sins we commit without much thought, from the way we talk to what we say, from what we do or don’t do to what we see. Do they leave us feeling unclean or not? Paul urges us that whatever we do should be done for the glory of God. We avoid becoming unclean when we choose to imitate Christ in what we say and do.
 

Two words jump out at me in these readings: anxieties and authority.  As we heard, Paul wants us to be free of anxiety yet don’t we often feel anxious whenever we have ignored authority in our lives? I think back to instances in my childhood when I disobeyed my parents. Sooner or later, I began to feel anxious, wondering what the punishment would be once they found out that I had ignored their authority. My parents are no longer around, but the occasions for anxiety still remain. They surface when we ignore authentic authority, that is, authority that ultimately has our well-being in mind.

Moses told the people of Israel that someday God would send a prophet with legitimate authority whom the people would be well advised to listen to. “Whoever will not listen to my words which he speaks in my name, I myself will make him answer for it.”  To this day, the Church cautions us that when we ignore Jesus’ authority, the consequence is sin, and the consequence of sin is punishment, if not in this lifetime, then in the lifetime to come.

When Jesus began his public ministry, his reputation for healing became wide spread. Some scripture scholars argue what the gospel writers alluded to whenever they spoke of unclean spirits. Were these people really possessed by the devil or only mentally disturbed? The debate is beside the point. These people were troubled and Jesus healed them.  Perhaps the man with an unclean spirit only had a guilty conscience, and afraid to face up to the wrath of God for his wrong doing. Unbeknownst to him, Jesus came to heal both body and soul and did so with the reprimand, “Quiet! Come out of him!”

Sooner or later, we all experience moments of anxiety.  Pope Benedict spoke recently of anxiety as a natural dimension of life. To defeat this, he tells us, we need Christ’s intervention in our lives, just as he intervened in the life of the man with the unclean spirit.  This was a lesson a certain political prisoner learned unexpectedly.

A Lutheran minister, Richard Wurmbrand, spent 14 years in prison in Romania, three of them in solitary confinement. His cell was a basement room with no windows, illuminated by a bare light bulb.  One night, he was startled by a faint tapping on the wall next to his bed. A new prisoner was signaling him. This prompted a fury of taps. After awhile, Pastor Wurmbrand realized that his neighbor was trying to teach him a simple code.

From this crude beginning, his neighbor, who had been a radio operator, taught him the Morse code. Wurmbrand told him that he was a minister. He then asked the operator if he were a Christian. There was a long silence. Finally, the radio operator tapped back, “I cannot say so.”

Every night the two men spoke through the wall, getting better acquainted. Finally, one night, the radio operator tapped a strange message, “I should like to confess my sins.” Pastor Wurmbrand was deeply moved by his request.

The confession took a long time. It was interrupted by periods of silence and extended far into the night. No detail was left out. Nothing was glossed over. The confession was sincere and from the heart. When the radio operator was done, Wurmbrand was profoundly touched and slowly, he tapped back the words of absolution. It was a dramatic moment for both men. Then the radio operator tapped these beautiful words, “I am happier at this moment than I have been in many years.”

Although he had been baptized, the radio operator did not consider himself a Christian until he took the step to meet Jesus in the person of his representative. What he did in the gospel, Jesus did in that prison cell. He drove out another unclean spirit, this time, through Pastor Wurmbrand’s words of absolution.

What Jesus did in the gospel story and that Romanian prison cell, he does every time the sacrament of reconciliation is celebrated. Perhaps the anxiety of baring one’s soul to a priest is enough to stop you from giving him the chance to cleanse you of your unclean spirit, yet the words of absolution can be so freeing. 

Each of us in this church to some degree has an unclean spirit, which keeps us from being the kind of person we want to be. For example, something may keep us from praying the way we would really like to pray. Or, something in us keeps us from loving the way we would like to love, especially our spouses and other members of our family.

Or perhaps, we may have something in us that keeps us from being as generous as we would like to be. For example, by virtue of our baptism, we all have the responsibility of helping to build up God’s kingdom on earth, yet, how much time, energy or money do we devote to this mission? We spend large amounts of time, energy, and money on ourselves, but not so much on God and God’s work.  

The bottom line is this: Jesus wants to free us from whatever keeps us from being as prayerful, as loving, and as generous as we would like to be. But Jesus can do this only if we approach him and open our hearts to him, which we can do best in the sacrament of reconciliation.

Are you feeling anxious? Then allow Jesus to drive the unclean spirit, the source of your anxiety, replacing it with the wisdom of his Holy Spirit. Instead of destroying us; the Lord wants to replace your anxiety with the wisdom that God is not terrifying, but gentle and loving. That is what makes his authority so real.
 

Our nation will soon witness a moment that few ever thought would happen, the inauguration of our first African-American president. President Obama’s journey to the White House brings to mind another African-American who introduced herself to the student body of a small college in South Carolina in this way.

“I was born to a mother who was deaf and could not speak. I do not know who my father is or was. The first job I ever had was in a cotton field.” The audience was spell-bound. She went on to say, “Nothing has to remain the way it is if that is not the way a person wants it to be. It isn’t luck, and it isn’t circumstances, and it isn’t being born a certain way that causes a person’s future to become what it becomes.” She then softly reiterated her point, “Nothing has to remain the way it is if that is not the way a person wants it to be.”

“All a person has to do to change a situation that brings unhappiness or dissatisfaction is answer the question, ‘How do I want this situation to become?’ Then the person must commit totally to personal actions that carry them there.” Smiling, she then said, “My name is Azie Taylor Morton, I stand before you today as treasurer of the United States of America.”

It is a long way from the cotton fields of the south to Washington, DC yet her origins did not thwart Ms. Morton from becoming the first African American to hold the office of treasurer. She raised a very relevant question that has moved many people, including those whom we encounter in today’s readings.

“How do I want this situation to become?” God knew something needed to be done to change the situation in biblical Israel so he called young Samuel. What we don’t hear is God’s message, “I am about to do something in Israel that will cause the ears of everyone to ring!” God is issuing a wake-up call to the people of Israel. Once Samuel knew that it was the Lord calling him in the dark of the night, he said, “Speak, for your servant is listening!”

God didn’t stop with Samuel. He sent his son, Jesus, to awaken the world around him as to what God wanted their situation to become. Jesus knew he could not achieve this mission single-handedly so he invited two disciples of John the Baptist to spend an afternoon with him that forever changed their situation, their lives, and the lives of many others, including you and me.

God also called on Paul to proclaim the good news. Paul knew the situation of sexual immorality in ancient Corinth had to change so he challenged his listeners to change their ways by letting go of those values which blinded them from experiencing the fullness of God’s grace and love. Yes, his language is tough and hard for many people to accept, but he is right. The body is not for immorality but for glorifying God if we want to experience the situation that God has in store for us.

Jesus posed a relevant question to Andrew. “What are you looking for?” That question is just as real for us today. What are we looking for in life? Do we desire to change the situation we find ourselves in? God hopes that we do. Face it; there is so much misery in the world. The dream for many of us may prompt us to answer Jesus’ question in material ways, such as a better paying job, a loving family, a beautiful home, or good health. Deep down, however, I imagine you are looking for more than that. You are also looking for all the things that life with God offers, not the least of which are peace, life, love, and joy.

No matter what the nature of our faith or lack of faith may be, we yearn to be spiritual, for spirituality is the awareness of something sacred in our lives. God is that something sacred in our lives, and God is calling you just as he once called Samuel. Like Samuel, few people recognize that God is calling them, but God does for he never tires in calling others to share his new vision for the world we live in.

By virtue of your baptism, God is calling you to be a disciple; that means more than a mere acceptance of Jesus Christ. Being a disciple means becoming part of God’s family. That calls for a willingness on our part to follow the example of the apostles and “come and see” God’s vision for our world. We do this by staying in the Lord’s presence through prayer and reflection. Discipleship also means using our God-given talents to do what we can to bring about God’s vision for a new world.

That doesn’t come easy. Consider the message from Paul in his letter to the Corinthians, reminding his listeners that the body is not for immorality but for the Lord. Instead of rejecting Paul’s message, as many are inclined to do, we should see the point he is making. Paul knows the reality of sin prevents us from having the situation that we desire in our lives: a union with God that rids our lives of the despair, unhappiness, and dissatisfaction that affects so many people. His advice is a means for us to change the situation we find ourselves in for the better.

Paul’s message is a wake up call for our country. Think of the price our society has paid for its immorality: sexual abuse, domestic violence, broken homes, drug addiction, AIDS, and countless abortions. Is that the situation we want for ourselves and future generations? I think not. The respect for human life can be restored. That begins in our homes, respecting ourselves, seeing ourselves as temples of the Holy Spirit and respecting our loved ones, then respecting others whom we meet. Our situation will change when we come to see that Paul is right; we belong to God. We must not forget that we are made in the image of God and that without God’s grace we cannot exist. Nothing has to remain the way it is if we enable others to also see that God values all life from the unborn to the dying, including them.